Revisiting the Rolling Stones for Christmas edition of Vinyl on Wednesdays

Since introducing our more relaxed (and popular!) approach of slapping on records from a band’s entire career while I ramble, it seems timely to do the Stones again, especially as this will be our Christmas party (and they remain my favourite band!).

It’s also timely, as this week marks 50 years since the release of Let It Bleed; the Stones’ dark masterpiece that closed their tumultuous 60s and was their last album to feature founding member Brian Jones.

While we will feature tracks like ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Monkey Man’ and ‘Live With Me’, I’m also going to be playing selections from the Stones vinyl archive I started building over 50 years ago, including many bootlegs containing alternate versions or works-in-progress, along with some live bootlegs.

Not only that, I’ll be playing a bunch of other Stones recordings spanning their incredible 56 year career, some regarded as quite rare, along with indulging my love of Keith Richards’ solo stuff (Obviously, a great excuse to revisit some of my memories hanging out with the great man!).

January will also be 43 years since Keith’s drugs trial at Aylesbury Crown Court, that took over the town centre for three-days and I covered as a Bucks Advertiser reporter. All told, it’ll be an adulterated Stones-fest!

As it’s Christmas, we’ll be in the smaller room so a party atmosphere will prevail (might even play some seasonal records to set the festive mood!).

The night will be dedicated to the memory of Rocking Ray, this year’s saddest of losses. He would have loved it.

Just a reminder that the Aylesbury Records Fair returns to the Hop Pole this Saturday between noon and four. The last one was such a blast that word got out and there’s going to be double the number of stalls.

I’m also looking forward to spinning some tunes at the event.

I can also reveal that the January 8 V.O.W. will see us subjecting the fesarsome Motorhead to the new format, with special guest ‘Krusher’ Joule, who was the band’s resident artist at their peak and I first met during my time with them.

We had such a good time on the panel at the Overkill launch that we decided to bring our Motorhead go Morecambe and Wise-style double act to Aylesbury!